


Holding My Last Breath

by hannahhoppers



Series: The CS Playlist [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Mentions of miscarriage, Songfic, Suicide, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 09:04:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8280341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahhoppers/pseuds/hannahhoppers
Summary: Holding my last breath, safe inside myself. Are all my thoughts of you?Based on the Evanescence song of the same name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own the show or the characters, so I'm playing with them. Adam and Eddy have such nice toys. Unbeta'd. Kudos and comments if you enjoy!

_Hold on to me love,_

_You know I can't stay long._

_All I wanted to say was_

_I love you and I'm not afraid._

 

She clutched him tight. He didn’t know what she was going to do tomorrow. 

 

They’d tried for years. Time after time, something went wrong. _This is my karma_ , she always thought, _for giving Henry up._ Everyone in town could see how much it affected her. But he always put on a brave face, until night fell and he thought she was asleep. Night after night, she heard him sniffling into his pillow, mourning the children they weren’t able to have. It broke her, seeing him like this. He’d told her one night, almost as soon as he moved in, that being a father was one of the few things he’d wanted to do his entire life. How he’d tried to be a parent to some of the lost boys before they lost the last of their hope to Pan. How incredible it was, getting to raise Bae for those few years. How much he loved Henry, but he wanted a little one of his own. It cut her to her core to see him, tears in his eyes but a soothing smile on his face, telling her it was okay, that they could try again, each time she ended up in a hospital bed. 

 

She couldn’t take it anymore. 

 

As the sun started peeking over the trees at the edge of town, she woke. She shook his shoulder and murmured “I’ll see you later. There’s something I’ve gotta do. I… I love you,” before going downstairs, pulling the note she’d written out of her nightgown, and leaving it on the counter. 

 

_I'll miss the winter,_

_A world of fragile things._

_Look for me in the white forest,_

_Hiding in a hollow tree._

 

She was the only one awake, she realized, as she walked through town, trying to find a place suitable for what she was planning. In the end, she decided on the woods, the tree branches thick with snow and a heavy blanket of it coating the forest floor. Several paces in, she found a big, hollow tree which would make a good spot. 

 

She settled atop it. Let a few thoughts flick through her head, of her parents, Henry, her baby brother, her Killian. They’d move on, she was certain. It was a shame she had to do this to any of them, it hurt her that she’d cause them pain, but she couldn’t live this way anymore. 

 

_Holding my last breath,_

_Safe inside myself._

_Are all my thoughts of you?_

_Sweet raptured light,_

_It ends here tonight._

 

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. She let a final image of her husband fill her mind, before summoning up all of her magic and letting it envelop her. Bright, white light surrounded the tree she sat in. A warm feeling settled on her skin, like early summer sunshine, before it all went black. 

 

○❀○

 

He became a mess after they found her, slumped and pale, inside a tree stump. Her blonde curls were tangled into the bark, nightgown slipping off her shoulder and tearstains on her cheeks in the purple twilight. It took weeks for him to even process that she was gone, even longer to accept it. Without her, he’d lost his purpose. Barely had a reason to wake up in the morning, save for the little boy a local adoption agency had placed in his care three weeks after the funeral. 

 

Little Austen looked like he could’ve been their own. He’d been given up by a young mother in distress, much like Henry, and Mary Margaret and David filed the paperwork so that Killian could adopt him. Each day, as he changed diapers and soothed colic, he tried to remember that this would’ve made Emma happy. He just wished he could do it with her.

 

_Closing your eyes to disappear,_

_You pray your dreams will leave you here._

_But still you wake and know the truth—_

_No one's there._

 

On the one year anniversary of the day she died, he left his son in his in-laws’ care and went to the rabbit hole. Got himself completely drunk before stumbling home and emptying the flask enchanted to be bottomless. He mumbled a drunken prayer that he wouldn’t dream before the alcohol took full effect and he passed out— he didn’t know that he could handle green-eyed specters only to be confronted with the truth that she was gone. 

 

_Say goodnight, don't be afraid._

_Calling me, calling me, as you fade to black._

 

If anybody else had been in the house, they’d have heard him crying out her name for hours while he slept. 

 

Two days after Austen’s third birthday, the child asked why he didn’t have a mother. Killian choked out an answer and blinked away the tears before picking him up and taking him to his grandparents’ loft. 

 

“I need you to watch him for a bit.”

 

“Of course, is everything okay?”

 

“Aye, it will be.”

 

“Okay. When should we expect to see you back?”

 

“I don’t know, erm… a few hours or so?”

 

“Alright.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“It’s no problem.” The dark-haired pressed a kiss to his little son’s forehead and whispered an _I love you_ before leaving. 

 

_Holding my last breath,_

_Safe inside myself._

_Are all my thoughts of you?_

_Sweet raptured light,_

_It ends here tonight._

 

He found his way to the same tree Emma had taken her life in. After a few moments’ consideration, he climbed up to the highest branch and looked down. The ground seemed to lurch up at him for a few seconds before he let himself drop, headfirst, to meet it. The last thing he felt was a snapping his neck before he found himself reunited with Emma. 

 

○❀○

 

“Neal’s not really my brother, is he?”Austen asked one afternoon, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter as Mary Margaret peeled potatoes. “And you aren’t my mom.” The woman took a breath and set down the vegetable. 

 

“No, honey, I’m not.”

 

“Where are my parents?”

 

“Your mother, my daughter, never got to meet you. Some really bad things happened to her and she made the decision to not deal with them anymore. And your father, well… after she died, he was never the same. But he loved you so much, and your mom would have too if she’d gotten a chance to meet you.”

 

The boy pondered for a moment. “Do you hate them for it?”

 

“What?”

 

“For dying. They didn’t have to, so why did they?”

 

“Oh, no, Austen, I could never hate them for that. Life had been really hard on both of them. Of course it hurt, and we still miss them _terribly_ , but we don’t hate them.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Why don’t you go wash up for dinner? And tell Neal.”

 

“Got it, grandma.”


End file.
